Book Reviews

Goodreads description:The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.

Until the taps run dry.

Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.

I thought the beginning of the book Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman was amazing. I continued to love it until the last two sections of the book. My patience wore thin towards the end in general, because anytime the characters had a chance at survival, something happened to stop it. I wondered how the book was going to end because it just kept going and going. Was this a teen survival book emulating the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was forced to push a rock up a hill - only to have it roll back right before he reached the top? Or would it end in tragedy? Or would it end in a cliffhanger (no pun intended, for those who've read it) and be resolved in another book?

Unfortunately, it was none of those possibilities. It ended suddenly and way too easily. Just like all of the obstacles came along at just the perfect moment, the perfect situation happened, and ta-da! everything was resolved!

Side note: The Merrium-Webster dictionary defines deus ex machina as "a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty."

Overall, Dry was enjoyable to read - super fast-paced and teens will love it. It'll make a great movie, too... just as long as they work on the pacing and ending a bit! And it looks like it will become one because Deadline reported in February that movie rights were sold to Paramount.